With advancing time, we are getting less and less time to ourselves that it is becoming impossible to sit and read books. Thanks to the latest creations, one of which is the Audiobook. Now we can listen to the book line-by-line while doing our work. People, who believe that movies tamper with the content of the book, would find satisfaction in audiobooks. Here is a list of the best audiobooks to try out.
1. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
The Dutch House is a 2019 novel by Ann Patchett. It was published by Harper on September 24, 2019. It tells the story of a brother and sister over the course of five decades. The novel was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The Dutch House is, in part, about real estate lust. Andrea, a pretty young widow 18 years Cyril’s junior, falls in love with his house and then finagles her way into it with her two small daughters. She certainly doesn’t fall in love with Cyril’s two children. The wicked stepmother’s arrival, even more than their mother’s ghosting, marks the end of Danny and Maeve’s childhood. Their expulsion from paradise becomes quite literal a few years later; in classic fairy tale fashion, Cyril is putty in his second wife’s hands. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both save their lives and thwarts their futures.
2. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Such a Fun Age is a 2019 novel by American author Kiley Reid. It is her debut novel and was published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons on December 31, 2019. It tells the story of a young black woman who is wrongly accused of kidnapping while babysitting a white child, and the events that follow the incident. When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for ‘kidnapping’ the white child she’s actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix’s desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege. With empathy and piercing social commentary, such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family”, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.
3. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Little Fires Everywhere is the second novel by the American author Celeste Ng. It was published in 2017 by Penguin Press. The novel takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where Ng grew up. The novel focuses on two families living in 1990s Shaker Heights who are brought together through their children. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads to the colours of the houses to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter, Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants – all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town – and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.
4. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Outlander is a series of historical fantasy novels by American author Diana Gabaldon. Gabaldon began the first volume of the series, Outlander, in the late 1980s, and it was published in 1991. She has published eight out of a planned ten volumes. This stunning blend of historical romance and time traveling adventure has captured the hearts of millions of readers around the world and catapulted author Diana Gabaldon to the top of the New York Times best seller list. Outlander introduces an exhilarating world of heroism and breath-taking thrills as one woman is torn between past and present, passion and love.
In 1945, former combat nurse Claire Randall returns from World War II and joins her husband for a second honeymoon. Their blissful reunion is shattered when she touches a boulder in an ancient stone ruin and is instantly transported to 1743 Scotland, a place torn by war and raiding border clans.
5. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Lincoln in the Bardo is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders. It is Saunders’s first full-length novel and was the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller for the week of March 5, 2017.The long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented. February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us.
6. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Goldfinch is a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other honours. Published in 2013, it was Tartt’s first novel since The Little Friend in 2002. The novel is a coming-of-age tale told in the first person. The protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum where his mother is killed. While staggering through the debris, he takes with him a small Dutch Golden Age painting called The Goldfinch. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don’t know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. The Goldfinch is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breath-taking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher’s calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.
7. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2018 novel by American author Delia Owens. It has topped The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019 and The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2020 for a combined 32 non-consecutive weeks.The story follows two timelines that slowly intertwine. The first timeline describes the life and adventures of a young girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the marsh of North Carolina from 1952–1969. The second timeline follows a murder investigation of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity of Barkley Cove, a fictional coastal town of North Carolina.For years, rumours of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So, in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life – until the unthinkable happens.Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heart-breaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
8. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vanishing Half is a historical fiction novel by American author Brit Bennett. It is her second novel and was published by Riverhead Books in 2020. The novel is a multi-generational family saga set between the 1940s to the 1990s and centres on identical twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes. The two light-skinned black sisters were raised in Mallard, Louisiana, and witness the lynching of their father in the 1940s. In 1954, at the age of 16, the twins run away to New Orleans. However, Stella disappears shortly thereafter. In 1968, Desiree leaves an abusive marriage in Washington, D.C. and returns to Mallard with her eight-year-old dark-skinned daughter, Jude. Jude grows older and moves to Los Angeles through a track scholarship at University of California, Los Angeles. While working part time as a caterer in Beverly Hills, Jude sees a woman who appears to be her mother’s doppelgänger. The woman is actually Stella, who has been passing as white.
9. Milkman by Anna Burns
Milkman received strongly positive reviews, with critics mostly praising the book’s narration, atmosphere, humour, and its complex portrayal of Northern Irish sociopolitics.Milkman won several awards, including the 2018 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, marking the first time a Northern Irish writer has been awarded the prize. The novel also won the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, as well as the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.As of 2019, the novel has sold in excess of 540,000 copies.Milkman is a historical psychological fiction novel written by the Irish author Anna Burns. Set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the story follows an 18-year-old girl who is harassed by an older married man known as the “milkman”.Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
10. Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado—a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite—these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force.
Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home.
